A number of state immigration provisions, including most of Arizona’s SB 1070, have been struck down by courts that found that they interfered with federal immigration enforcement. The Supreme Court, however, never determined the constitutionality of a portion of the Arizona law that requires police to ask about immigration status when they have “reasonable suspicion” someone is in the country illegally, saying it couldn’t make a ruling until seeing how the law was implemented. That part of the law was later watered down in a settlement.

In a filing Friday, the state of Texas argued that SB 4 is less restrictive than the Arizona law because it doesn’t require officers to ask about immigration status; it simply says cities, counties and universities can’t have policies preventing officers from “inquiring into the immigration status of a person under a lawful detention or under arrest,” which includes traffic stops. It also provides some limits on inquiring about victims’ and witnesses’ immigration status.

The plaintiffs allege that SB 4 doesn’t offer sufficient guidance — such as Arizona’s requirement for reasonable suspicion — for when police can ask about immigration status and prevents their supervisors from giving them any direction, creating a situation in which local law enforcement officers without training in immigration statutes will be trying to enforce federal laws.

In a declaration filed by lawyers for the city of El Cenizo, the former chief council for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that oversees legal immigration, outlined some of the myriad forms of status that immigrants can have in the U.S. that would prevent them from being deported. Immigrants such as asylum seekers who are waiting for legal status might have work permits even though their application hasn’t been approved; young people who are allowed to stay in the U.S. under the deferred action program don’t have visas; lawful permanent residents waiting for their green card renewal are given only a receipt; and U.S. immigration law creates a confusing network of visas, including 23 nonimmigrant visas that allow foreigners to be in the U.S. temporarily, Roxana Bacon, the former USCIS lawyer, wrote in her declaration.

Requiring county jails to hold people after they’ve posted bail, finished their sentence or had their charges dropped because Immigration and Customs Enforcement believes that they can be deported violates their Fourth Amendment rights to protection from unreasonable search and seizure, the plaintiffs allege.

Deportations are civil proceedings, and Garcia earlier this month ruled in an unrelated case that the Bexar County Jail violated an immigrant’s rights by holding him on an ICE detainer without probable cause to believe that he’d committed a crime.

In its filing, the federal government said that under an ICE policy implemented in April, all detainers must be accompanied by a warrant showing that the person being held has been ordered deported or that immigration agents have probable cause that the person can be deported.

Geoffrey Hoffman, director of the University of Houston Law Center’s immigration clinic, said that won’t bring the jail into compliance with Garcia’s ruling.

“The decision says there has to be probable cause of a crime, and that’s the problem,” Hoffman said. “Having a detainer isn’t probable cause of a crime, it’s a probable cause of deportabilty or removability.”

SB 4 violates the First Amendment rights of public officials

A provision of the law punishing local governments that “adopt, enforce or endorse a policy under which the entity or department prohibits or materially limits the enforcement of immigration laws” infringes on the rights of local officials to voice their opposition to SB 4, the plaintiffs allege.

In its response, Texas said the term “endorse” means “ratifying, confirming, authorizing, or permitting,” and wouldn’t affect statements made in opposition to SB 4.

SB 4 was passed with discriminatory intent

In their effort to convince Garcia that SB 4 violates the right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment, the plaintiffs are taking a page from the playbook of states that have challenged President Donald Trump’s restrictions on admittance to the U.S. from six Muslim-majority countries. Plaintiffs in those cases have used the president’s tweets and statements that he wants to ban Muslims from coming to the U.S. to advance their argument that the executive order discriminates based on religion.

In its response, the state noted that Texas has its own laws prohibiting racial profiling.